the thing i’ve prayed for most

Let’s get real. Have you ever thought about what you’ve logged the most hours praying about? Of course, there’s no way to know for sure, because no one is timing these things, but I think the stats would reveal the subject that’s closest to our hearts.

I’d like to say that the thing I’ve prayed for most is my relationship with God, my marriage, or my children, but that wouldn’t be true. The topic I’ve talked with God the most about in my 34 years of walking with Him is food.

What?

For most of my adult life, I believed that my body was too big and that I was addicted to food. I considered overeating a daily sin that I was desperate to overcome, hence the constant prayers about my food intake, exercise, and my body. I reviewed the food I’d eaten each day and repented for any transgressions. No matter how hard I tried, I would always end up bingeing and feeling like a complete failure. I was convinced that my eating habits were a direct reflection of my spiritual health. At some point along the way, I even believed that my struggle with food was my “thorn in the flesh”:

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10

It seemed to me that my problem with food was the thing that would keep me humble and in great need of God’s help and forgiveness. I never thought I would ever be free from it. Ever.

But God! He had other plans! Looking back, I can see how He was working to answer my endless prayers to be free from my obsession with food. He led me deep into the diet industry, first as a member of a weight loss program, then as an employee of the company.

As time went by, I began to see how the members of this program were not as addicted to food as we all thought, but they were chained to the idea that being smaller meant that they would finally be good enough. I could see how much they hated and shamed themselves, and sought control over their lives by setting up elaborate structures of rules and expectations around food and their bodies. I began to realize that the problem was NOT their weight and eating habits, but the false idea that they had to lose weight to be loved and accepted. Eventually, God opened my eyes to see all of this in myself too.

I was absolutely driven by the idea that if I was smaller, and self-controlled around food, I would be good enough. I didn’t feel like I measured up to what God expected of me, or what other people thought I should be. I definitely used dieting as a means to gain control over my life and try to make myself worthy.

It felt like the strangest thing in the world when God asked me to give up dieting. He led me to embrace the body that He gave me and stop trying to make it smaller. God helped me to make peace with food by letting go of the idea that some foods are morally good and some bad. The wildest thing happened when I took His hand and followed Him down this new path.

I experienced freedom from food obsession for the first time in my entire adult life. All of those hours of prayer were finally answered! It turns out that moralizing and restricting food was the source of my compulsive behaviors with food. Once I stopped restricting, I stopped bingeing and thinking about food all the time.

It brings me great joy to say that I haven’t prayed much at all about food in the last couple of years, other than to gush with gratitude over what the Lord has done to set me free. The freedom has begun to extend into other areas of my life, too.

Friend, if I may be so bold…. you are not addicted to food. You will not be more loved if you are smaller. What you eat today is no reflection of your moral character. Perhaps you long for freedom. It is within reach. Talk to the Lord and ask Him to show you the first step toward freedom.

Comment below or send me a message if you want to connect and chat about food freedom and body acceptance!